Now, Where Was I? 6 Strategies For Dealing With Workplace Distractions

Distractions at work are nothing new. Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) wrote about strategies for dealing
with work distractions way back in the 1300s. In his Life
of Solitude, Petrarch offers the following advice for the medieval
scholar: "Close the doors of your senses in order to achieve solitude in the
presence of other people." Today, you will find many people doing exactly
that in coffee shops and other public places.

Yet distractions have gotten worse, much worse, in fact, and
technology is largely to blame. As late as the 1960s, the only piece of
technology on a worker’s desk was a telephone (and maybe a typewriter).
Contrast that with today’s collage of desktop computer, notebook computer,
voice over IP (video) phone, smartphone, iPod, iPad, and other devices. Each
one of these electronic "servants" vie for the attention of its master with
beeping alerts, trendy ringtones, and flashing screens. This army of devices is
overloading us with information, and we battle to keep up.

According to the New
York Times, we consume three times more information today than we did in
1960. In fact, we are being interrupted
11 times an hour, according to Basex
Research, and these interruptions are taking an hour and a half out
of our workday, according to a recent uSamp
survey. The cost? More $10,000 per employee per year, according to
the same survey. A Stanford study found that
interruptions cost more than money; they cost us our health through increased
stress. And if you think that today’s Gen Y multitaskers are less
affected, note that another Stanford
study found that multi-taskers are actually impacted more by
interruptions than non-multi-taskers.

What can we do to fight distractions and reduce stress? Here
are six proven strategies, three for individuals and three for organizations.

Individuals

Turn off alerts. Email and
instant message alerts are one of the biggest causes of interruptions. One
study found that 71% of people answer IM alerts within 2 seconds, and 41% of
people respond to email alerts within 15 seconds. Turning these off will do
wonders for productivity.

Off-site, out of mind. If
you have work that requires deep thought or creativity, like writing or coming
up with new ideas, find a quiet place outside the office, like a library or
study, where there are fewer distractions.

Be "alone in the crowd." Follow Petrarch’s 650-year-old advice and find a way to shut out the world in
crowded spaces. For example, work in a café with a pair of headphones. Many
people find it easy to shut out distractions when they are not targeted at
them.

Organizations

Create email policies. Limit the number of email recipients for a given message. Limit the length of
an email thread, and encourage people to pick up the phone instead of sending
endless emails. Discourage the use of email’s "cc" capability.

Create meeting policies. Not all meetings need to be an hour or a half hour. Shorten meetings and make
sure computers are closed (unless needed for note taking), phones are off, and
insist that texting is strictly verboten.

Reduce context switching. Workers change windows 37 times an hour, on
average, according to the New York Times. We use too many applications to get work done. We spend the day
cutting information from one window into another; all this toggling is sapping
us of our ability to work. New
collaboration tools are actually making things worse. Forrester Research found
that 61% of organizations have invested in 5 or more collaboration tools, but
that most of them are not being used effectively. At one of my recent seminars, one participant
went as far as to say, "If I have to use one more productivity tool, I won’t
get ANY work done." The key is to make what you have already work better by
integrating them so typical workflows like document and knowledge sharing are
contained in a work context.

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One thing I find fascinating is that in every age, people felt overloaded. It is only in retrospect that we see people living in a simpler time (remember The Waltons or even Bewitched? - Darrin was home for dinner at 5PM and the only disturbance he had was a telephone and an intercom). Having said that, there is no doubt that technology is having a huge impact on the level of distractions with which we are dealing. 50 years ago, when you went on vacation, there was no way to reach you. You may have been thinking about work, but you weren't being disturbed by work. On the other hand, a few years ago, I had the absurd experience of having to take a conference call while at Disneyworld. The insanity of going around and around on the Dumbo ride while listening to my CEO talk about major changes in the company was my wake up call that something is seriously wrong with the way we let technology take control of our lives. I suggest taking a look at William Power's "Blackberry's Hamlet" and look at his idea for an "Internet Sabbath." A great idea.

It is interesting to note that as television portrays the past in shows such as Mad Men and Pan Am - that you immediately feel that their daily lives were less cluttered and distracted. You realize the impact that technology has on all of us every minute of every day.

These are all tactics that are suggested by The Effective Edge in our individual and team productivity workshops. When you are multitasking, you're expending 40% of energy between the devices you're using. That means that more than 20% of your energy is lost just switching between programs or devices. Such a huge waste! Thanks for the great tips!

At my office, we have "focus hours" twice daily (from 9 - 11 am and 2 - 4). This is time when everyone commits to no interrupting others unless it's a customer emergency. We break it from time-to-time but we always get back to it. More here... http://blog.givemore.com/how-t...

Great article. This is something that I have been combating. My solution (to some degree) has been to schedule times and limits for specific activities such as Facebook and email. I also have our office team now dedicate 1 hour per day to looking at "distractions" such as reading news bulletins, bookmarking cool content and general surfing. With so much coming at us from all angles, sometimes we do need to take the time to surf the information wave. :)

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We also live with the illusion that the 'open door' policy leads to greater collaboration and communication. This is not always true. Time for quiet thought and even a nap can be regenerative. There has to be ways of "closing the door" to interruptions. This is vital to productivity that requires deep thought. I know of leaders who escape the office and retreat to Starbucks or the gym for such solitude.

Without gaps between musical notes all one gets is noise. We forget the power of silence.